Thank you, Madam Chair.
Built into my genetics is that when you hear the words “trust me” or “I'm here from the government to help”, run. Run fast in the opposite direction. It's built into my genetics, so when I see legislation at any level written and it's wide open, the regulations are critical. This one scares me. It scares me because of what has to be written next.
I've been around a long time. I've seen a lot regulations written on legislation that's very broad, and that's what gets scary to me, so Minister, when you talk about facts, I go to a term called “history”. As soon as you write something, it's history. When you split it in half, one is his story. Everybody's story is valid; it's his story. When you say that we have to have media with facts, everybody has his story. It's like when police take witness statements: They take one and they get one statement. When they take another one, they get another set of facts. When they take a third one, they get another set of facts. Everybody's personal opinions and everything they write are facts to them. I have a little problem when you say you only want media with facts, because what everybody writes is factual to them.
When you say “exclude”, I get really nervous. I'm inclusion. You said “excluding”. I don't like things that exclude. That's problematic for me.
My last thing, Minister, and you know it, is that I have a number of independent newspapers in my riding, and they are not covered by any of these. They have fewer than two journalists. They are hard-working people and they don't have the time or the resources to get together to negotiate anything. There are only going to be crumbs left on the table for anybody after the big guys take it. Minister, this doesn't help the weekly newspapers that cover everything in my riding in the communities. It's problematic.
Mr. Minister, I don't know. You've heard me say this before.
